New #5onFri Article at DIY MFA, Plus Final Reminder for the GoFundMe Campaign

It’s been a while since I last took part in DIY MFA’s weekly #5onFri series; and with Maria V. Snyder’s guest post on Tuesday, I wasn’t able to promote it here until now. So, here’s last Friday’s #5onFri post, where I shared a little more of my “beta-reading preparation” stage by sharing five of the questions I posed to my beta-readers to get specific feedback on aspects of my novel.

An FYI on Recent and Future Blogging Activity

I’m currently going through a period where my blogging activity has been “spotty,” and it might continue for a while. It’s due to a mix of reasons: increased workload at my day job, personal travel, and busyness at home while maintaining a consistent writing schedule for The Novella. So for the past couple weeks, it’s been taking me longer to reply to comments, and I’ve had to cut back on visiting other people’s blogs and commenting on their posts. This could also have an impact on my blog-writing here within the next couple weeks.

I haven’t decided whether to take a hiatus because of this. Keeping up my commitments to DIY MFA and Writers Helping Writers won’t be a problem, so I’ll still share the links here as those articles go live. But for this blog… we’ll have to wait and see.

Final Reminder for the GoFundMe Campaign for the Iceland Writers Retreat

Saturday, February 4th is the final day for the GoFundMe campaign for my trip to the Iceland Writers Retreat! Almost $2200 has been raised as of today, but plenty of perks are still available (first-chapter critiques, writing coach sessions via Skype, custom loose-leaf tea blends, 1-month subscriptions to One Stop For Writers, etc.). So if you’d like to help out, visit the GoFundMe campaign page and submit your donation today.

NOTE: By “final day,” I mean that Saturday will be the last day I’ll actively promote the campaign. I’ll keep the page up and running for a few more weeks so I can keep donors informed as I fulfill their perks. This means that, by GoFundMe’s policies, the campaign will still accept donations after Saturday as long as it remains online. But after 2 months of investing time and energy into this campaign, Saturday will be it.

Hope you are all doing well and winter (or summer, in the Southern Hemisphere) hasn’t been too grueling for you so far. And as always, thank you for continuing to visit and offer your encouragement, support, and friendship. ❤

Thank you, E. *hugs* And yes, I’m going no matter what now. Not only is it important that I honor the donations and any perks that people signed up for – but it covers most of the trip’s costs! So, really, how can I NOT go now? 🙂

I’m so glad that you’re going to Iceland and that your campaign did so well! If compromising on the schedule here is what it takes to fulfill your other important commitments, I’m sure we readers will understand. The key is to maintain a routine that isn’t too draining on oneself. Good luck with all your endeavours, Sara! 🙂

So am I. 🙂 And part of me is glad the “main promotional period” for the campaign is over. (I’ll explain what I mean by that in tomorrow’s post.) A lot of time and energy goes into running a crowdfunding campaign. But I’m truly grateful for everyone who’s helped out in some way, and now I’m excited about shifting my focus to preparing for the trip.

Regarding the blogging schedule here: I’ll have to see what happens over the next week or so. But yes, it’s more important to focus on my commitments to DIY MFA and Writers Helping Writers instead of here. The only trouble is, I’m not sure how long this busyness will last.

It is, and my biggest concern about taking an extended / indefinite hiatus is losing my readership. So I’m in the process of re-thinking things… and I have some ideas. Again, we’ll see what happens in the next week or so, since I don’t have anything ready for next week atm.

Aw. I understand the worries of losing your readership with a long hiatus. Scheduling a month in advance helps me a lot. I try to do all of my posts within two weeks and that usually helps me manage. Congrats on raising $2200! That’s amazing! That trip sounds fantastic! I want to try to save up and go one year. I’ve wanted an excuse to go to Iceland! I really want to branch out to international authors and Iceland has more readership and authors than any other country in the world.

Scheduling ahead had been my strategy, too. Before now, I’d been able to finish posts 1 or 2 weeks (and sometimes 3 weeks) in advance. But life offline has been so busy that I don’t have anything ready for next week yet – and I don’t know if I will, either.

On a different note: I am SO excited for the retreat! Still can’t believe I’ll be there two months from now.

I can relate to your struggles on keeping up with blogging and other blogs. We only have so much time, and I think it’s reasonable to make choices – maybe even hard ones – to focus on things that are really important to us.

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Welcome! I’m Sara Letourneau.

Speculative fiction writer for teens and adults. Columnist at DIY MFA and Writers Helping Writers. Published poet, former tea reviewer and music journalist. Avid reader, tea-holic, and music lover. My heart belongs to the beaches of Cape Cod.

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